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The Main Street project, unusual though it was, moved swiftly through the approval process. A
week after the application was filed, after an hour and a half of public discussion, Bexley’s
planning commission unanimously OK’d the new building.

The Gramercy would be four stories high. Sixty feet. Three one-story condos, stacked atop each
other, all atop a floor of retail space. In all, 24,000 square feet plus a private underground
parking garage for 18 cars.

It would knock down the existing, crumbling building at E. Main Street and Cassady Avenue and
provide homes for three longtime Bexley couples who wanted to feather their empty nests along the
city’s main drag.

“I wanted to be in the center of the city,” said developer Frank Kass, 70, who planned to live
on the second floor with his wife. “For safety concerns.”

But the plan came to a halt when neighbors caught wind of the major Main Street project they
knew nothing about.

A week later, 39 residents, most of them living along the street just north of Main, petitioned
to reverse the commission’s decision. They said the application wasn’t filed early enough and that
neighbors didn’t receive proper notice. They also said the building was too tall — exceeding
maximums set forth in Main Street design guidelines — and didn’t provide enough parking.

Which brought it all to 2:45 a.m. yesterday.

After a hearing that stretched more than 12 hours over two evenings — during which everyone
seemed to take offense to something — a weary Bexley City Council decided the future of that big
Main Street building.

By a 6-1 vote, they affirmed the planning commission’s decision. Only councilman Mark Masser
opposed, objecting to the height of the building. The Gramercy could go ahead, as long as planners
added some parking spaces and made a good-faith effort to reduce the building’s height.

Katie Fulton, whose husband, Dan, served as representative for the neighbors during the hearing,
said she wasn’t surprised by the outcome. The couple was part of an audience of 15 who stayed
around to hear the city council’s decision.

“We are not a team of lawyers,” she said. “We were a team of neighbors against a man who ...
knew what he was doing from the beginning.”

But yesterday afternoon, running on just a few hours of sleep, she said she was proud that the
city council had attached some conditions to its approval. Mrs. Fulton seemed hopeful, too, that
the city would address some of the issues — including the gaps between city code and Main Street
design guidelines — raised during the debate.

Masser said the neighbors could claim that heightened awareness as a victory. As 3 a.m.
approached, Masser said it was the longest meeting he’d sat through in three decades, and he’d
taken part in similar battles over proposed buildings. He said he couldn’t believe how many people
had stuck it out.

“If you feel defeated and bad, you shouldn’t,” he told the neighbors. “You’ve brought forward
that we have problems, and we’re going to correct the problems.”